al-Qu’eda or al-a’diversion?William Bowles

Of course it’s too early to say with any certainty who set off the four bombs that caused death and chaos in London today but predictably Tony Blair says “they were obviously designed to coincide with the G8 summit”. Well, he would say that wouldn’t he.

My immediate reaction is to be suspicious not about the timing of the bombs, this is the most obvious aspect, but who exactly is behind them.

It’s been almost four years since 9/11 without a single bombing in the UK (the police say they’ve foiled attempts but have given out no details) but with dire warnings being handed out at regular intervals – “not if but when” etc.

And with hundreds arrested under anti-terror laws but not a single conviction of anyone actually proved as being a member of al-Qu’eda or even being caught red-handed with a bomb, it’s safe to assume that it’s unlikely that al-Qu’eda actually exists as an effective organisation, let alone operates an ‘international terror network’.

And given Osama bin Laden‘s proven connection to the CIA as a paid ‘asset’ for at least ten years prior to 9/11 coupled to the fact even after years of chasing him up hill and down dale without so much as a sighting, it’s pretty obvious that the US have no intention of actually catching the bugger.

Instead, we get handed a new bogeyman in the form of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who predictably proves to be as elusive as the fabled Osama. Is it just me, or do I see a pattern here?

After all, consider the implications of catching a man (if he actually exists) who is in all likelihood (still) an ‘asset’ of the CIA? What tales would such a man have to tell about his paymasters (if he lived long enough to tell his tale that is)?

I might add that the historical record is on my side when one looks at how the US ‘Cointelpro’ operated, placing operatives inside a number of left-wing organisations including the US Socialist Workers Party, the CPUSA and the Black Panther Party.

One American psy-ops operative recently leveled with the Australian newspaper The Age: “We were basically paying up to US$10,000 a time to opportunists and criminals who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq.” – Kurt Nimmo

Once inside they would assume positions of responsibility and attempt to get these organisations to adopt confrontational (sometimes, suicidal) policies that would then give the state a reason to arrest and/or kill said members, especially leading members, as it did with the Black Panther Party, murdering its leading members in cold blood after being set up by infiltrators.

The use of agent provocateurs is a well established method that many states have and still do, use against those it perceives as its enemies as well being used as a pretext for the introduction of repressive measures. It doesn‘t even require a 9/11, merely the threat of ‘subversion’ or of future terrorist actions.

The carnage unleashed in London today has to be set in the context of a government under severe pressure not only because of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath but of a state that has lost all credibility in the eyes of the public. It has to be set in the context of its failing ID card scheme, more accurately a national database, a crucial building block in the construction of the corporate security state. At this crucial period it needs to up the anté and what better than a series of bombings to create the right conditions?

Maintaining a state of terror is crucial and the British public have been carefully primed for today‘s murderous attacks with endless reminders from the state security apparatus that such events were entirely predictable. No doubt there will now be calls for even more repressive surveillance and ‘pre-emption’ methods to be introduced.

The media for its part is of course doing its bit to keep ramming home the ‘al-Qu’eda' connection even though not a shred of evidence has ever been produced in or out of a court of law to show that it exists, let alone that’s it‘s behind any of the bombings. The name is merely a mantra, like ‘Red’ or ‘Commie’, a convenient button to be pushed as and when needed.

Of course it can‘t be proved that the people who set these bombs are the paid agents of the British or US state, anymore than the state can prove that al-Zarqawi exists, but the inability of the most sophisticated intelligence/security agencies on the planet to catch them; their chosen targets – never agents of the state, always civilians; and in Iraq, almost always Iraqi civilians – points to the work of agent provocateurs in the classic mould.

As I‘ve pointed out many times before, the Websites that are the convenient mouthpiece for the various ‘Islamist’ organisations, are extremely easy to trace, yet mysteriously, even when they have registered offices in the heart of London, the police never inquire. It’s all just to easy, just too pat and when the prepared handouts from the state propagandists are accepted without question by the corporate/state media, we have a ready-made recipé for repression.

Today’s blasts have been claimed by yet another, previously unknown ‘Islamist’ organisation. The bottom line is that as long the state defines the terrain of struggle – the war on terror – the losers will be us, punters on the way to work and the poor of the planet who dare defy the imperium.

There will be those of course who will brand me a conspiracist, it’s surely outrageous to claim that our government would conspire to murder its own citizens but consider that it conspired with the US government to invade and occupy Iraq, murdered tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, and all done on the basis of lies and of a set of fabricated documents and the statements of people who were paid to incriminate the government of Iraq (one of whom, Ahmed Chalabi is under indictment for precisely this), so what’s a few dozen or even a few hundred innocent people here in the UK, in Spain, as well as the thousands who have been murdered in Iraq by ‘al-Qu’eda’? When set in this context, there is surely nothing far-fetched about the British state conspiring to bomb the tube here in the heart of London, there’s an awful lot at stake, not the least the future of the capitalist state. Think about it…